This is not strictly speaking about singing but I am posting this here as I thought it was were Rosfrog was most likely to look.

In my last oboe lesson my teacher wanted me to sing a low-pitched, voiced (French) "u" while whistling at the same time as a means of releasing tension in my throat. I failed lamentably to do this in my lesson. I am not much good at whistling at the best of times and very self-conscious about singing and my attempts to do both at once ended up creating even more tension so my teacher told me to try at home when I was by myself and more relaxed. (The eventual aim being to play the oboe while singing "u" and whistling). Today, after a few attempts, I did manage to do both at once and had a go with the oboe. The resulting oboe tone had a rather quick vibrato, which made me wonder if I was actually doing it properly.

Anyway, to get to my question:
What exactly is going on in the throat when you sing a low-pitched, voiced "u" while whistling at the same time?

A few subsidiary questions:
- whistling does not involve the vocal chords. Is this correct?
- to produce a voiced sound, the vocal chords have to vibrate. Does this vibration interrupt the air-stream and/or cause some sort of vibrato?
- my teacher was insistent that the "u" be more heavily voiced than an ordinary vowel. Why?
- what difference does it make if the "u" is low-pitched?

Thanks

Hey !

The vowel sound is irrelevant, really - he wanted you to make an U to avoid unecessary pressure on the back of the tongue, which would have created tension in the throat. Any front vowel would have done the same job.

Whistling does not include the vocal folds, or at least not necessarily - it is possible to voice a sound and then to close the mouth somewhat and use the air in the mouth to whistle - but normal whistling doesn't require the vocal folds to adduct.

Vibrato is not likely to be caused by this process, although if you had a lot of tension in the throat, then the relasing of that tension could well have caused your vibrato to come free (vibrato, as it's commonly used in the voice, is a movement of the larynx which is only possible when the muscles of the throat outside the larynx are balanced and stable).

He wanted you to over voice the vowel, I think, to maintain the vocal fold adduction when you passed onto whistling.

The low pitch of the U ensures that you won't get any unecessary constriction in the throat and that your pharynx remains relaxed (the higher the pitch, the more taut the vocal folds and the longer and thinner the larynx) - any exercise in tension release is easier to do on a low note.

As an aside, if you're having difficulties with tension in your throat, learn how to retract your false vocal folds - 90 percent of all singing tension is caused by these little s*ds. There are two ways to do it easily :

1) imagine that you're going to giggle, but that you're not allowed to. Feel it in your throat. Keep that feeling of lateral opening (but don't yawn)

2) if that doesn't work, try this - put your fingers in your ears and breathe normally through your mouth. Listen to the breath in your head - you may hear more on the in breath or more on the out. Slowly, and without reducing air flow, open up the throat until the sound of your breathing has vanished in your head. Keep this posture and try to memorise it. This is complete false vocal fold retraction.

Any tension in the throat which is affecting air-flow is directly due to the false vocal folds - so I suppose your teacher was helping you to drop that tension. The exercise he's given you is perfectly effective too - pick the one you feel works best for you!

Let me know if that's any use.

Allan

Thanks Allan.
That was exactly the sort of technicality I wanted (and in English )

The U is because this is the sort of shape your mouth needs to have for an oboe embouchure but I might try experimenting with other front vowels and see what difference that makes to the feeling in my throat.

Thanks for the other ideas - I'll give them a try as well.

Do you have any ideas about removing tension from breathing in general? The attempt to remove the tension from my throat is an attempt to free up the way I breathe.

Cool. As for breathing - there are only two real tension problems that can occur - either you're breathing back to front (your stomach goes in as you breathe and out as you breathe out) - in which case you need to revert it so that your stomach goes out slightly when you breathe in and in when you breathe out.

Alternatively, it's a false vocal fold problem - if they aren't retracted, they make breathing a bit laboured (you can often hear the white noise they produce in the speaking voices of those who don't retract them, or who constrict them on purpose - weight-lifters, heavy metal singers etc.) - the exercises I've given you will retract them. Part of the problem is that teachers of wind and voice often tell students to sing with the throat relaxed - relaxed is not the same as retracted, and what we really need for efficient breathing and voicing is retracted.

Here's a great exercise (I think Janice Chapman first came up with this one, it's based on Accent Breathing) -

1) breathe naturally through the mouth. Don't attempt to take a huge breath (this is anathema to good singing and voicing)
2) all of a sudden, yell 'hey' with real emotion as if someone was stealing your bag.
3) repeat.
4) repeat several times in a row. Hey (short pause) Hey (short pause) etc - being emotional about each voicing that you make.
5) notice that you never actually need to breathe in. Brilliant isn't it? It's called elastic recoil breath and it's the most efficient breathing for singing and wind instrument playing - and what's even better is that your body knows how to do it naturally. You don't need to learn.
6) repeat it again with one hand just under your ribs on the side, and the thumb of your other hand just under your sternum, with the little finger resting lightly on the belly-button. When you do the emotional HEY sounds, you'll feel the points under the hand around your waist push out, the point under your thumb by the sternum will also push out, and the bit under your little finger will move inwards. This posture will be maintained as long as you hold the sound emotionally (practise by making your HEY last longer each time) - and will (very important) suddenly collapse when you stop making the sound (this is what causes the automatic recoil breath).
7) to apply it, then - make sure that each phrase you sing / play is done so as if it were a primal, visceral sound being ripped right from the bottom of you (like the HEY) and, in between, let it all collapse - the air will shoot in and just before beginning again, go visceral.

Janice refers to this as FAT and SPLAT. Before voicing you FAT (find abdominal tension), just after voicing you splat (singer, please lose abdominal tension).

So a series of notes would go = (FAT) NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTE (SPLAT) (FAT) NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTE (SPLAT) etc. - you'll see that in between voicings we splat, then fat straight away. The effort must go on longer than the voicing, however.

Give it a go - hope it works !

Allan

Allan you really are a mine of information and I should have asked you earlier.

My problem is a vocal chord problem. My breathing is so awful when I'm under stress that I can even even manage to create enough tension to stop myself talking (let alone playing a wind instrument). Of course being the sort of person I am, despite having a lovely teacher, I find that lessons create a fair amount of extra excess tension. The added problem with the oboe is that you need the breath to come out under high pressure so what I tend to do is breathe in, block the air and then start playing, using my throat to control the amount of air that I let out. What my teacher wants me to do is breathe and play immediately and control the air with my abdominal muscles and not the throat.

I have just had a quick try of your exercise in front of the computer and it seems like a good one for the oboe as it involves a fast projection of air. I shall switch the computer off and go and try with the oboe before my kids get home from school and wonde why I'm shouting "hey."

That's great. Definitely give the false vocal fold retraction a go, then - that will keep them out of the way when you do it.

Generally when we sing, the breath flow is controlled by the vocal folds (not the abdomen). The pressure is controlled by a combination of chord thickness and the abdomen, however. In your case, as you're not singing, we're replacing your true vocal folds with your oboe reed. The flow, then, should be right up against the reed from the start, with your abdominal muscles working to increase or decrease pressure as necessary. Thus your false vocal folds are the ones causing you the problem (if you were closing your true vocal folds, you'd end up singing) - so learn to pull them back as far as you can.

It's worth noting too that the larynx is not designed for singing, or even speaking, for that matter, as it's primary function. We can't sing in a natural way - because singing requires the throat to be open and the larynx has as it's primary function to do quite the opposite when we are under stress. The larynx constricts in throat to protect the vocal folds and the lungs whenever we feel a threat. The problem we have is that our body is not able to distinguish between the adrenaline released when we are busy drowning and the adrenaline released because we have to perform a piece of music in front of someone. In both cases, the larynx will constrict (especially the false vocal folds) - this accounts for the 'I can sing / play it better than this at home' thing.

So combine false vocal fold restriction (ear blocking exercise) with the air support exercise and your problem should vanish!

Have fun with HEY and ne fais pas peur aux mômes !

Allan

Brilliant stuff. I'm an oboe student too and that's the first good explanation I've had about what one is actually trying to achieve when the teacher says "open your throat", along with some exercises on how to achieve it. I've been sitting here breathing in and out with my fingers in my ears which is causing some funny looks as people walk past (I'm at work). I am avoiding the temptation to suddenly yell HEY down the office.

See what you have started Allan - there will oboe players up and down the country getting thrown out of places for yelling "Hey" randomly!

Do it! Do it!

Start yelling HEY everywhere !

Carol you may laugh but I am amazed by the effect of everything Allan has suggested.

Obviously it is going to take some time for all this to become automatic (I can hardly yell "hey" and then launch into Telemann ) and unfortunately I won't have the house to myself again until Thursday

The fingers in the ears is, I think (for me) even more effective. I have finally understood what my teacher keeps saying about the air-stream always being constant whatever the dynamic and whatever the note. I am hoping that there will be lots of people making calls on their mobile phones on the train next week so I can sit there with my fingers in my ears and practise my breathing without looking too much of an idiot

Thanks again Allan

I was in no way denigrating what Allan said, it just amused me when pushpull said he was avoiding the temptation to shout "Hey" at work

I didn't think you were - my reply was supposed to be light-hearted as well.

Cool - glad it was useful (and try the 'hey' loudly on the train if there's no seats... might work !)

That's the bit that amazed me. I now have some idea of what my throat is doing.

BTW, I think we should all shout HE even on crowded trains. We are oboists, we're supposed to be mad.

What interests me here Allan as I have been using [y] as in tu for warm ups for this purpose for years quite how many oboists have found this thread useful given that singing and oboists use the same muscles but to do the exact opposite, and that in a sports warm up, one is encouraged both to stretch and relax muscles.

I always felt that there was a synergy between playing the oboe and singing, yet that was questioned when I was an undergrad. Now all these oboists are using singing exercises to help them with their oboe playing my faith in this synergy has been restored.

You were quite right to think that Jod, any open throat breath exercise will help with a reeded instrument in the measure that we consider the reed to act as the valve like the vocal folds do when singing. Other, more chord related exercises wouldn't have an effect, though.

Fancy your teachers not knowing that! Some people refuse to continue their development, eh?

It's the applied ergonomics that really gets me. Having had some Alexander lessons, and worked a lot on core-stability in a Pilates Class, my own singing teacher came back from a seminar and explained how all the emphasis on the ribcage on breathing was encouraging tension in the neck area. This was something I'd observed both teaching the Oboe and Singing, so when she then told me that I should be concentrating on the transvers abdominus and oblique abdominal muscles to provide support, and encourage lateral-intercostal breathing, I'd had a head start. Now the only time I mention the word Diaphram is when describing how the lungs are separated from the other internal organs, as the diaphram is passive in exhalation.

This then allows me to work on ensuring that Singers work on relaxing their sterno-cleido-mastoid muscle and upper-trapesius muscles to free up the neck and allow the voice to work more freely. I am also amazed at the number of people who due to the fact they never move their jaw have TMJ problems.

Oboist runs away to the safe world of simple words like reed.

SIMPLE ?!!!! REEDS!!!!?? You're not pulling that one on me, matey - I've got bagpiper friends! They spend hours talking about the perfect reed and ninety percent of the time they hold the instrument is spent taking it apart to fiddle with / sand / lick / adjust / pray over / scream at the reed.

Then just when everyone's tuned to their a, they go and be a b-flat to spite the violinists...

Simple indeed!

The word is simple and you can see them, unlike your "sterno-cleido-mastoid muscle". But I bet bagpipe reeds are a doddle compared to ours (we get them covered in spit and whatnot and squeeze them flat as a pancake with our over exuberant embouchures). As I'm sure you're aware (given your love of the smallpipes) a reed in bellows blown pipes will last years, 'cos they don't get wet. Mind you, I believe highland pipers change their reed every couple of weeks or do.

Oh, note for JOD. Don't be too surprised that several oboists have been watching this thread. It was raised by an oboist specifically with respect to playing oboe and "advertised" on the woodwind forum. Very useful it's been too, thanks. But what on earth is the "sterno-cleido-mastoid muscle"? Or perhaps I should stick to REED

pushpull:

I AM AN OBOIST! (as well as a singer)

Your SternoCleidoMastoid Muscle is attached to your neck near your ear and runs over the side of your neck attaching to the innerside of your collarbone. It is used by both singers and oboists.

You can normally tell its tight in singers when you see a throbbing blood vessel appear on the neck whilst singing which is not good practice. For Oboists, it is vital for maintaining an open airway.

Now having fiddled around with double reeds, scraped, wired, etc, I bet many singers would shy away from the difference between a british and continental scrape, and the effect it has on tone, or the variants in cane, or other variable in reed making including the type of gold beater skin used.

Your actual physiology is common to both instruments.

Ah, so what do I actually with it in order to maintain that open airway? All this "open your throat" talk has always felt a bit nebulous to me.

My first teacher did say we "sing through the oboe".

You don't need to do anything with your SCM muscle to help with an open throat - whether it's tight or not will not affect the throat - if it's tight, though, you'll end up straining it and probably get a nasty headache too. It makes jaw movement difficult when it's tight. But it's not related to the open throat stuff. That's all false vocal fold retraction with the exercises I posted.

Mind you, all this reed stuff - you're right. Most Irish and Northumbrian pipers never get their reeds wet - but they do have several of them all at once (my smallpipes has five sets of reeds to keep in tune) - but then again, you could just play and claim that it's the traditional bagpipe scale like SOOO many pipers do when their fifths are squeezed something rotten and their drones don't agree on what a D sounds like... oboists can't get away with that, so you lot have to play in tune AND keep changing your reeds cos they rot!

See, it's not simple!

Allan
(go on, admit it - you've got a little baccy tin full of 'reed making magical implements' like pipers have, haven't you.... and that perpetual search for the magic reed that works perfectly then only lasts two weeks - that can't just be confined to pipers...)

No not yet, that's still teacher's territory. The closest I have to gadgets are my jeweller's screwdrivers and ciggie papers. Mind you, I do find myself furtively eyeing up knives now and then.

You mean a whole box full of reed making magical implements
and the magic reed that lasts for more than 24 hours

(I did have one reed I loved which lasted for ages and when it finally "died" I couldn't believe that my teacher just callously snapped it off and threw it away).

Back on topic. My teacher makes frequent comments about playing the oboe being like singing and that the reed is the oboist's "vocal chords."

Even more back on topic, having been practising breathing with fingers in my ears for days and having perfected a silent "hey" I felt that I had got it sussed and would surprise my teacher by my relaxed throat. I had reckoned without real adrenalin My teacher had got the accompanist to come to my lesson which always adds stress (two people listening instead of one and it was a new piece); then towards the end my daughter's cello teacher arrived with one of her pupils as they were booked with the accompanist afterwards and they sat down to listen and my playing fell apart completely .

OH no ! Sorry to hear that nerves bit you!

Try this :

Quantify the effort required to keep the open throat feeling whilst supporting the hey - give it a number between one and ten. Doesn't matter which, as long as it feels right.

When performing under scary conditions, add two to that number (so if it's usually a six, change it to eight when you're in adrenaline situations) this will help you fight the fight or flight reflex and feel everything working as it should.

After another week of breathing with my fingers in my ears, I had another lesson today. To use my teacher's word, the difference in my playing was "spectacular" .

He wanted to know what I'd been doing all week which made such a difference so I said breathing with my fingers in my ears. He was initially a little sceptical as he'd never heard anyone suggest it before but, as he is open-minded about different ways of doing things, he put his oboe down and had a go. He then said it was a brilliant idea, that he had no idea why it should work but that it is exactly the sort of sensation he wants his pupils to have in their throats and that he would be trying it out with a few of his other pupils later on that afternoon and incorporating it into his lessons for all beginners.

The only downside was that I completely wrecked his planned lesson. The piece I am working on was supposed to be improving my breath control as it has very long phrases. Solving the breathing problem meant that everything else (tone, intonation, dynamics) also "instantly" fell into place. He had not expected such a rapid change compared to last week and hadn't brought any new music with him and neither had I.

He has booked the accompanist to come again next week so I hope I can maintain my "new" relaxed throat with her there too.

EXCELLENT STUFF !

If your teacher wants to have a chat with me about this kind of stuff, feel free to give him my contact details.

And if he wants a scientific explanation of what's happening you can suitably impress him by telling him that the impulse to make the sound go away makes the false vocal folds retract, opening the throat totally (it's the false vocal folds that make the kind of white noise stuff we hear).

Let us know how the accompanied lesson goes!

It was slightly better than the previous accompanied lesson but my throat was no where near as relaxed as last week with just my teacher. What was interesting, however, was that I could feel very clearly where the tension was in my throat (whereas previous to the "fingers in the ears" I just had the impression that I couldn't get air either into or out of my lungs).

One last question, why do I unconsciously resort to breathing through my nose when playing under stress?

Have just read this thread with a great deal of interest - as a flute player, not as an oboist.I've been sitting here trying the "breathing with fingers in ears" and think this is what my teacher has been saying for ages about my throat not being relaxed enough and that I'm stopping the air somewhere. I think I also have the same problem about getting the 1st note started as Kerrioboe does ie breathe in, stop air with throat before trying to play. Whether I can remember the feeling of fase vocal fold retraction during the stress of a lesson is another matter.

I think everyone does that - it's something to do with protecting the airways, I think.

Andy-Piano-Flute - great ! Keep at it, it'll click into place!

You both might find some assistance with twang exercises too - a little bit of twang is necessary in all singing to keep the throat working efficiently, and recent research has shown that it may be beneficial to wind players too as it makes the epiglottic funnel slightly wider at the bottom than the top, thus concentrating the air more.

Try cackling like a happy witch or quacking like a duck (Kerioboe - the French duck sound coin coin is excellent for finding this) - once you've found an easy to produce, but slightly reedy tone (without being overly nasal) - try to hold a note with this sound, then practise taking it out of the note and putting it back - feel what's moving in your throat to do this - once you've got it, just move that thing a tiny amount back - enough so that the note you hold feels 'ringy' without it being overly twangy. Then use this position when playing too.

Hope it helps - if you want to record MP3's of yourselves doing it, I'll let you know if you're on the right track - it's quite hard to explain in a message !

Thanks for the latest suggestion - it is more complicated than putting my fingers in my ears and I might take you up on the offer of listening to a recording in the New Year if I haven't got anywhere by then. Right now I'm marking endless "contrôle continu" papers whilst trying to breath with no "white noise" and periodically putting my fingers in my ears to check that I'm doing it properly. (And coming on here when concentration flags totally).

Wow - bon courage with the contrôle continu stuff (have you started surveillance duty yet ? that always killed me).

A passing thought for my ex-colleagues now up to their ears in paper-work (shudder).

Twang your way through the papers !

Unfortunately the "twanging" requires too much concentration at the moment to be able to mark at the same time.

The official exams don't start until after Christmas. Two years ago they told us when we would be invigilating on Christmas Eve - making it virtually impossible to arrange to swap with anyone (and we are not allowed to state any preferences for what we can and can't do). To my surprise, my inviligating times arrived in the post this morning - a whole three and a half weeks in advance and (for the first time ever) on a day and time that suit me perfectly

Do you think I can invigilate with my fingers in my ears ?
I have considered making reeds while invigilating but we never know who we are invigilating with until we get there.

I reckon you can invigilate with your fingers in your ears! If it's anything like it was over here, we used to do the exams in the huge football staduim for the major subjects and if you didn't have something to keep you occupied it was quite easy to go mad walking up and down for a five hour exam!

You could always work on silent twang, no one would see or hear that! You can use a little nasal 'in' vowel to find it quietly then keep the posture in the larynx whilst you breathe in and out (you should feel a sensation of increased space at the back of the mouth) - just avoid the duck exercices whilst invigilating!

Desperately needs breahting help

*does the fingers in ears thing*

Will report back.

Any ideas on how to get rid of the mental hang-up about breathing?

Firstly, quit seeing teachers who think it's the be all and end all! Breathing is rarely if ever the source of a problem yet many teachers insist on making the focus of their entire pedagogy when it's only really a tiny part of the equation of singing - the result is that the student often gets hung up about it and is so terrified of doing it wrong that they are crippled when it comes to singing.

Try the 'hey!' as if calling to a friend exercise which you should find here in this thread and see if that helps (if you do it with enough emotion, your body will automatically support properly and breathe properly - the problems only come when we try to 'intervene' in this process) - see if that feels freer and easier.

If not, please PM me Nicki - I'll happily chat with you over it or give you a bit of time on Skype to show you how you CAN sing freely and comfortably without fixating on your breath - I've done it for several other forumites who were in similar positions to you and the results are usually really liberating.

Let me know !

Allan
(I'll leave you with a quote from the fantastic Jo Estill - The breath must be free to change depending on what it meets on the way out. - Meaning let the chords and larynx control the air, not the other way round - this is especially pertinent when you take into account the sheer force of the diaphragm compared to the tiny little vocal chords - let the chords order the amont of power they need, rather than flinging everything you've got at them and hoping they don't rip!)

Firstly I need to say that I am coming to this from a flute playing perspective and that it is me, rather than my teacher which is more concerned with breathing.

Thanks for the offer of help - I'll have a go at the exercises - as long as you don't mind listening to a flute!

No trouble! In that case, try this :

1) imagine that you're about to yell a huge happy 'yay!' - in fact do it three or four times - don't hold back, make it real.

2) go again, but this time stop before you make the sound and take note of the energy in the body.

3) hold that energy for a few seconds, then drop it.

4) call it up again, and play a few notes with the open throat thing in place. Each time you need to breathe, drop the energy for a split second, then bring it back.

5) repeat until you can do it almost unconsciously.

That should help loads with freeing up the breath and keeping the throat open. If you're still having difficulties try some twang based exercises (cackle like a happy witch, or imitate a baby crying at a high pitch - hold onto this feeling whilst you play - it will give a clearer and more focussed stream of air).

I would be delighted to listen to a flute - one of my favorite instruments to listen to!

Allan

Thanks - I will try it at some point soon and let you know how I get on.

Hope I don't disappoint then!

I've been reading this thread with considerable interest - I'm going to try this too!

Thanks kerioboe for asking the question and allan for being so darn knowledgable!!